Hope for Labor (and Democrats, too)

Our Man The President gave a great speech in Milwaukee over the Labor Day weekend. It's worth watching the whole thing.

And Andrew Sullivan looks at Democratic prospects in November and in 2 years. Things are serious, but the real honest truth is that things are getting better, the right things are getting done, they just haven't produced a miracle. And the right is still intellectually and morally bankrupt.

I don't believe they are in any way serious about spending restraint and are only serious about their bewilderment at the real America where racial, religious and cultural diversity is a fact, where illegal immigration has been plummeting, where gay marriage is winning, where legal abortion will never go away, and where the new empire the last administration embarked upon has bankrupted us for a generation at least.

Obama continues to do real things that matter. The right just screams and stomps their feet and offers dishonest criticism and no ideas of their own.

Obama's persistent refusal to take the red-blue bait still pushed by Fox News like a cheap bump of ideological meth is to his credit. It is emphatically not about his failure to "take them on". He is taking them on - but on his terms, not theirs'. Take it away, Mr president:

When it comes to just about everything we’ve done to strengthen our middle class, to rebuild our economy, almost every Republican in Congress says no. Even on things we usually agree on, they say no. If I said the sky was blue, they say no. If I said fish live in the sea, they’d say no. They just think it’s better to score political points before an election than to solve problems. So they said no to help for small businesses, even when the small businesses said we desperately need this. This used to be their key constituency, they said. They said no. No to middle-class tax cuts. They say they’re for tax cuts; I say, okay, let’s give tax cuts to the middle class. No. No to clean energy jobs. No to making college more affordable. No to reforming Wall Street. They’re saying right now, no to cutting more taxes for small business owners and helping them get financing.

You know, I heard -- somebody out here was yelling “Yes we can.” Remember that was our slogan? Their slogan is “No we can’t.”